30 Years

The hazy crescent moon sails across the night sky, like a pale ship on a misty sea with no star to follow. Flakes of snow fall like motes of dust, settling on my shoulders and chest as I walk down the silent lane. I can feel them flutter against my right cheek, tiny spots of cold that tell me the breeze is blowing from the north. There are no shadows, though the eastern sky behind me is a subtly paler shade of charcoal grey, heralding the slow coming of morning. The sound of my own feet thudding softly on the bitumen becomes quieter as the snow begins to settle, and dark footprints follow my progress, gradually fading as the snow gently erases them to the nothing from which they came. 

The snow is deeper as I walk down the west side of the valley, past the Taineiji Temple and beside "Byakkozawa" the White Fox Creek, and it complains squeakily beneath my feet, a rhythmic croak that echoes like some giant insect passing through the trees. Bamboo arches across the road above the village, the leafy heads of each stalk weighed down by the snow, making a dark tunnel through which I must pass. As I breach the bamboo a waft of breeze brings the fragrance of cows and straw and the consequences of such a confluence of forces. Ah! The joy of country life!

And now I come down the valley, the last stretch of road before home. The snow falls thicker now and, as I open my mouth to draw a sigh, a flake of snow lands sizzlingly cold on my tongue. I enter our driveway and carefully pick my way across the dark cobblestones, slippery with the snow melted by the warmth they had stored from yesterday's sun. I am home.

As I open the storm shutters the Town Public Address system chimes six o'clock and thirty years. For it was thirty years ago today, the 21st of January 1990, at 6:00 AM, that I first landed at Narita Airport and saw snow for the first time in my life. 

It has been a long journey since then. Learning a whole new language and culture, studying at Shimaoka's in the thatched roof studio on a wooden kick wheel. Marrying Mika and building the new wood kiln. The blessed births of our four beautiful children, watching them grow. The burning down of the studio when we moved to the house in Ichikai, fitting into a new community there. Building a life there, only to have it destroyed by the earthquake of 2011. Starting from nothing again in Minakami and the help and support we had from so many people. And our children growing into adulthood here, gradually leaving the nest, one by one. It has been thirty years full of love and hope, laughter and tears, triumph and disaster and unrelenting optimism. And above all, love. The richest years of my life. 

Now it is time to make breakfast and get the family moving, and my own wooden kick wheel is waiting in the studio for me.

I have come full circle, arriving in the snow at the break of dawn. But this time, I am home.